Island threatened by climate change 4: Republic of Palau

Global sea levels are rising and the world’s land ice is disappearing. Sea levels have risen 6 to 8 inches in the past 100 years, and Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers of ice per year since 2002, according to NASA satellite data.

By the year 2100, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea levels will rise as much as 20 inches.

While rising sea levels ultimately influence the entire planet, they pose the greatest threat to the islands currently residing at sea level.

Here are some of the islands — many of them small nations — likely to face this crisis first.

The people of Kiribati may want to rethink their plans to relocate to Fiji, as this 7,056-square-mile island nation in the South Pacific is pondering its own solutions to the challenges of climate change. While its larger islands include mountains that reach high as 4,000 feet above sea level, Fiji is still concerned about the effects of climate change. Indeed, some families are already moving further inland to escape rising sea levels.

Republic of Palau

Palau and other island nations have formed an expert advisory committee to bring the issue of rising sea levels to the United Nations. While others see climate change as an economic problem, “For us, it’s about survival,” then-President Johnson Toribiong said at a U.N. news conference in 2012. He also noted that waters had risen two or three times higher in Palau’s region than anywhere else in the world. The current president, Tommy Remengesau, has uses the example of how he loses his garden to the sea every full moon to illustrate the very real dangers Palau faces.

The 190-square-mile chain of eight main islands and more than 250 islets sits around 500 miles southeast of the Philippines. Geographically, it ranges from mountains to low-lying coral islands. Hopes are that the United Nations would be able to determine the legal ramifications of climate change via international law. Palau, which has roughly 20,000 citizens, is already active in other such arenas and is home to the world’s first national shark sanctuary.